The end of the "hockey stick" premise. I knew it was phony. But they think that's OK. After all, they were doing "God's Work." Further analysis shows that the reports confirming the "Hockey stick" were done by people who were co-authors of other papers with the Hockey Stick author. A "Clique" of "God's Work" types.
Saturday Night Ice
By Tom Maguire
Its the middle of July, temperatures should soar into the 90's tomorrow, so naturally we want to talk about hockey, or anyway, hockey sticks. And global warming, natch.
Following our "Friday Night Ice" from last February, we have more on the Mann "hockey stick", which purports to show Earth's temperature as stable for most of the last millenium and soaring in the last century (a visual on p. 3).
Critics questioned the statistical methodology; now the House Energy Committee has released the long-awaited Wegman Report. Some excerpts from their factsheet:
"Questions about the reliability of the Mann studies were of interest because they raised policy-relevant questions concerning the objectivity of the IPCC and its reliance upon and “promotional” use of the studies’ ‘hockey stick’ shaped historical temperature reconstruction.
Following receipt of the letter responses, committee staff informally sought advice from independent statisticians to determine how best to assess the statistical information submitted. Dr. Edward Wegman, a prominent statistics professor at George Mason University who is chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on
Applied and Theoretical Statistics, agreed to independently assess the data on a pro bono basis. Wegman is also a board member of the American Statistical Association.
About the Wegman committee: Dr. Wegman assembled a committee of statisticians, including Dr. David Scott of Rice University and Dr. Yasmin Said of The Johns Hopkins University. Also contributing were Denise Reeves of MITRE Corp. and John T. Rigsby of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. All worked independent of the committee, pro bono, at the direction of Wegman. In the course of Wegman’s work, he also discussed and presented to other statisticians on aspects of his analysis, including the Board of the American Statistical Association.
Among the panel’s findings and recommendations:
• Mann et al., misused certain statistical methods in their studies, which inappropriately produce hockey stick shapes in the temperature history. Wegman’s analysis concludes that Mann’s work cannot support claim that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium."
So, fill me in - is Wegman credible, did the House Reps take this committee into the tank, what?
John Quiggin at Crooked Timber looks at the other aspect of the report, which dealt with a possible breakdown in the peer review process.
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